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Wednesday, February 10, 2016

I find this hard to believe and completely unexplainable. We have a female Muscovy duck who was hatched on our property. She can just about fly well enough to go over a fence and land on our little pond in front of the house. She laid 14 eggs under an old three wheeler motor cycle and hatched out all three of them. Unfortunately she and her ducklings took to roosting at night (is roosting the right word for ducks??) on our front porch. What a mess in the morning.

Finally, when the babies were only a few weeks old we decided we had had enough. We found a friendly farmer who raises ducks himself and has a nice big pond. He lives 6km away across our main highway. We crated up the ducks and he came and got them in his pick up truck. Two days later they were all back on the pond.

We phoned him and asked him if he had changed his mind. Not at all, he said. The ducks just disappeared. Somehow, she had led her small ducklings on a 6km walk. Somehow she knew where we were in relation to where she was and what direction to go to get home. Somehow she didn't loose a single duckling. I'm in awe of her.